The biggest achievement of The Body Shop in India after lowering the prices of its 200 best selling products in March this year is getting a new pool of customers who had never tried the products earlier, revealed a top company official.
“After lowering the prices, the 200 best selling products, which comprise around 40 per cent of our product category, have been generating around 50 per cent of the total revenue of the company,” said Shriti Malhotra, general manager, The Body Shop.
In an exclusive interaction with IndiaRetailing about the brand’s strategy to reach out to more customers, Malhotra said, “We are not selling a product which caters to a very niche segment of customers. We are not typically targeting those English speaking elite class; rather our strategy is to reach out to maximum number of people and make the products more accessible to them. The lowering of prices supported by advertisements across media including vernacular and regional newspapers helped us stay relevant to all consumer class, and we are quite successful in our strategy.”
Speaking about the expansion plan, Malhotra added, “We plan to open 6-8 more stores by the end of 2009. In next two days, we will open a store in R City mall in Mumbai followed by another store at Garuda Mall in Bengaluru in the next week. We plan to open stores in new cities as well, besides opening in the existing cities.”
The Body Shop currently operates 25 stores across eight cities in India, including 10 stores in Delhi. “In terms of catchment, of course Delhi and Bengaluru stores are getting better footfalls than other stores. However, in terms of city based performance, our stores in Jaipur and Ludhiana have crossed our expected growth rate,” she said.
Further, as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, The Body Shop has recently launched a campaign world wide called ‘Yes, Yes, Yes – To Safe Sex’ to generate awareness about safe sex and eventually launched a new product – lip butter in association with MTV Networks International (MTVNI). The Body Shop will contribute the revenue generated from selling the product to MTVNI’s Staying Alive Foundation, which supports HIV and AIDS education campaign. This is the third consecutive year of The Body Shop’s association with MTVNI and for the last two years, it has generated over USD 2 million globally from this campaign.
— Sarimul Islam Choudhury
